by Byron Fisher, BookSurge, £6.45

This book purports to uncover the “paradox” that supply does not cause demand but demand causes supply. Supporting this only moderately intriguing premise is a series of deliberately (and annoyingly) eclectic examples – from the crafting of prohibition legislation to evolutionary biology. For example, at what “price” does a water-based organism begin to evolve to a land-based organism?

It is larded with spurious formulae, which, together with its full title The Supply and Demand Paradox: A Treatise on Economics, gives fair warning that this is a book that wants to be taken very seriously. On finishing it – which isn’t that easy given that the myriad examples actually prevent any meaningful sense of cumulative insight building – I turned my thoughts to what a purchasing professional would learn.

Despite the absence of real market imperfections from the discussion, if you are interested in microeconomics and want a set of unusual examples (prostitution and assassination) then, at only slightly more than 100 pages, it could be for you.

But anyone looking for a primer on microeconomic theory would be better served elsewhere, and the level of abstraction in the work will bemuse most practice-focused readers. The key conclusions that “markets, wherever they may be, are demand based,” and that “demand for goods and services cannot be created, but must be uncovered as if it were a buried treasure,” will seem distinctly underwhelming to those trying hard to sell in difficult economic circumstances.

Michael Lewis
Professor, University of Bath School of Management